


Even Superheroes Need Accountants

by firstnameithoughtof



Category: Wolverine (Movies), Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lame superpowers, Logan is secretly romantic, M/M, Superpowers, X-Men Inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstnameithoughtof/pseuds/firstnameithoughtof
Summary: A 30-something accountant with late-presenting abilities is enrolled at the Xavier Institute. He finds himself a home, a better job, and a boyfriend.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Logan (X-Men)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	Even Superheroes Need Accountants

**Author's Note:**

> Very very very brief Erik/Charles cameo. Playing very fast and very loose with the x-men universes using ambient knowledge curated over the years. Started from a prompt to explore a new student joining the x-mansion and turned into a one-shot romance.

His back foot is barely out of the Uber before it is pealing away, throwing gravel and enveloping him in a plume of dust. When it settles, the car is already out of sight.

The 4.9-star driver had offered him a phone charger, bottled water, and a selection of snacks, but clammed up real quick once he realized where his passenger was heading. Not that he blames Kendall S., who drives a red Hyundai. The enormous mansion in front of him is mysterious and imposing. A fireball lights up in the windows of one of the higher floors and is quickly frozen mid-explosion inside an even larger ball of ice before dropping out of view. He’s about to tip Lamar extra for his trouble, but apparently he’s been given a 1 star passenger review. Rude, Kendall.

“Hi!”

Travis startles at the greeting. He’s 90 percent sure the silver-haired boy standing on the bottom step of the stairs leading to the ornate double-wide oak doors wasn’t there a second ago.

“Are you…Travis?”

The boy is chirpy. Too chirpy. It’s annoying. It reminds him of the energy he no longer has now that he’s well into his 30s.

“Ah. Yes. That’s me.”

The boy’s smile is still plastered wide across his face, but it takes on a distinctly confused quality. If all the pupils at Xavier’s Academy are as young as him, Travis doesn’t blame him.

“Okay! Follow me! I’ll take you to your rooms and give you the full tour before dinner. Then you can settle in. I’m Pietro. Nice to meet you!”

Pietro is jittery like an unleashed terrier and walks just slightly too fast for Travis to follow comfortably. Countless flights of stairs and deserted hallways later, they arrive at a modestly sized, one-bed room with an adjoining bath containing a bathtub sporting clawed brass feet he only sees in period movies.

“I wondered why new kid was getting a single, but, well…”

Pietro trails off awkwardly. Travis gets it. Bunking an adult man in a dorm of teens wouldn’t be ideal for either him or the teens.

“Just drop your bag anywhere. You can unpack after the tour and dinner!”

“Isn’t the tour usually performed by the headmaster?”

“Oh, Professor X only gives tours to the kids with cool abilities.”

Pietro swallows the rest of his thought and spins on his heel to leave the room, his face cherry red. Travis thinks maybe his tongue moves faster than his brain can process. He drops his single bag with a whump onto the beautiful hardwood floor and returns to the hallway. Pietro is already turning the corner at the end of the landing. How is he so speedy with a foot wedged permanently in his mouth?

Travis can’t bother to take offense, he thinks as he tries to catch up. He’s not particularly impressed with his abilities either. It really should be harder to lose track of a boy with a full head of bright silver hair. Thankfully, Pietro doubles back for him sheepishly. Travis thinks about how large the mansion looked from the outside. God, he feels tired already.

He follows dutifully behind as Pietro bounces from room to room, narrating a mile a minute. But there’s really only so many ways to describe classrooms and common spaces, so instead he’s getting the lowdown of all the outlandish abilities of passing students. Pietro gets countless rolled eyes while more than a few curious, or suspicious, eye-squints are thrown Travis’s way. As he feared, he is the oldest student by decades.

His favorite introduction is Wanda, who turns out to be Pietro’s sister. He’s streaking towards her with arms spread wide. His hug is deflected by a wall of faint red energy. The sound his body makes as it bounces off the near-invisible barrier and jackknifes into a wall reminds Travis of a bird flying into a window.

“Sis! Harsh!”

But he’s laughing loudly and Wanda’s smiling, so Travis allows himself a chuckle as he pulls Pietro to his feet. The tour continues to its conclusion without any more excitement.

“Aaaaaand here’s the dining room! We have breakfast, lunch, and dinner here every day! That’s the end of the tour! See you around!”

Travis doesn’t bother trying to track Pietro as he disappears into the swarm of students already burying their faces in their dinner. Instead he grabs a plate and serves himself from large buffet-style vats, periodically peering at the sea of teenagers and wondering where he can possibly sit. On the whole, the student body seems polite enough, but he doesn’t relish the thought of making small talk with children. Not that it can be any worse than listening to his coworkers discuss adjusted rate mortgages at lunch when they all know full well they’ll be renting for the rest of their lives. Well, ex-coworkers. Good riddance.

He’s considering absconding back up to his room with his plate of food when an empty table in the back corner of the room catches his eye. As it turns out, it’s not entirely empty. As he approaches, he’s pleasantly surprised to see a stocky (adult) man hunkered over his plate of food. The man is sitting so that his back is to the corner and he has a clear view of the entire dining room. No seats around him are taken. Travis plonks himself into a chair directly across from his dining companion.

The man looks up sharply when he sets down. Oh. Hello, eyebrows. And hellooo sideburns. There’s even a delightful tuft of chest hair peeking out of the top of a ratty tank top. The glare that hits Travis should intimidate him but he’s too tired and hungry from the frenetic Pietro tour experience and he’s an out gay man who appreciates a bit of rough. He wordlessly shovels a mouthful of food down and meets the glare without flinching. He’s seen fiercer looks from drag queens and after braving the folsom street fair during SF pride week ’04, it’s going to take more than a scowl to put him off.

His second scoop of food is too loud against the plate and he realizes that the entire dining room has gone quiet. He strategically does not turn around. He forces himself to calmly eat another bite. The man in front of him sits up and levels his glare past Travis’s shoulder. Twittering babbles of forced conversation immediately fill the hall. It’s a little too loud to be casual. Travis raises an eyebrow.

“Did you just glare an entire room into talking?”

“Buzz off, bub.”

Travis snorts, unimpressed, and pointedly continues eating.

“A little old to be a student,” the man observes accusingly.

“Late-onset psionic manifestation,” Travis shrugs. “Travis.”

He decides not to offer a handshake.

“Logan,” grunts the man.

“Charmed.”

They fall silent, but Logan is looking at him expectantly.

“What?” He asks, forkful of food paused halfway to his mouth.

Logan crosses his arms. “Your powers. What are they?”

“What are yours?” Travis challenges. He’s only fairly sure he’s not going to be beaten to a pulp.

Logan eyes him for another second before raising a fist. Glinting metal _swords_ sprout from between his knuckles with an ominous “shnk”. He spears a dinner roll off Travis’s plate and eats it off his blades with a smirk.

“Fucker, go get your own food.” Travis gripes. He stabs his fork into the round of steak on Logan’s plate and chews into it petulantly. Logan chuffs softly, amused. Travis is very much aware that he only manages grand theft carne because Wolverine let him keep his hand.

“Your turn,” Logan rumbles.

“Ah. Well.” Travis flushes. “It’s not very interesting.”

Logan sheaths his claws and places his elbows on the table, leaning his face forward on his hands with exaggerated interest.

Travis rolls his eyes. “I can talk to animals.”

“I’ve heard worse. Better than Squirrel Girl.”

“…animals hate me.”

Logan’s eyebrows go up. “I’m interested.”

“You’d be the only one,” Travis blushes. “I just want to learn how to reign in my active projection radius. My thoughts are pretty loud. And apparently, I project a lot of anxiety.”

“There’s a story here.”

Travis squirms in his seat.

“Spill.” Logan presses.

Travis sighs. “There was a corporate all hands meeting at the park. One of those team building days that executives think are important for department cohesion and dynamic inter-personnel interaction matrices or whatever shit they get taught at corporate executive conference retreats.”

“I’m starting to lose interest,” Logan grumps.

“As you should,” Travis nods. “I was called up to do trust falls with the CFO-“

“The fuck is that?” Logan interrupts.

“Oh, sorry. Chief Finance Officer. My boss. I was on the accounting team.”

Logan waves for him to continue.

“So we’re up in front of the entire company and I’m seriously stressing out. My boss isn’t a small man, and my arms are really weak. I guess I was leaking out a lot of emotions.”

“Understandable.” Logan is nodding along.

“Next thing I know, there’s a plague of pigeons dive bombing the entire crowd and unleashing their bowels.”

Travis is pulled from his train of thought by a single bark of laughter. It’s sudden and loud and harsh and sounds like a car backfiring. He kind of loves it. Is he blushing?

“Then what happened?”

“Ah.” Travis tries to rein his thoughts. “Then, um…came the squirrels.”

“Tough break. Squirrels, too?”

“Yeah, squirrels. They started chucking nuts from the trees. They have very good aim.”

Logan laughs again, even harder this time. His face smooths out with mirth. Travis is already a fan of Logan’s scowl, but the wide-open grin is making him feel dizzy.

“That the end of it?”

“Just about.” He’s definitely blushing. And not from embarrassment. “Execs were pretty pissed about the whole thing and I got cut loose pretty much immediately.”

Logan’s frowning now. Travis misses his smile already.

“That’s shitty of them. Where was HR?”

“Company had a definition of ‘human’ that didn’t apply to me,” Travis says bitterly.

“Fuckers.”

“Yeah, well, I got a letter from Professor Xavier almost immediately after offering to help me with my animal problem and now I’m moving into a mansion. So I guess I’m not that bad off.” Travis says, trying to lighten the mood. Mutant rights are too heavy for a first meeting conversation. “No more team building exercises either.”

“So it’s all animals that got a problem with you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not about to walk into a zoo to find out.” And because Travis is feeling brave. “Do wolverines have a problem with me?”

There’s that smile. Travis’s heart skips a beat.

“This one doesn’t.”

Logan gets up, dumps his plate into a collection bin and saunters out of the dining hall, leaving Travis to stew in confused arousal.

Travis doesn’t miss his job in corporate America at all. About a month after his relocation, he comes across misplaced financial documents and muscle memory compels him to begin scribbling corrections and calculations in the margins. When Professor Xavier returns in search of his lost papers, he finds a very sheepish and apologetic Travis and a 3rd quarter budget for his academy that has been balanced masterfully with some suspiciously creative accounting. He gives Travis a truly impressive side-eye. And then he gives Travis a monthly stipend to handle all his finances. Travis happily trades line items like “Executive Travel, Hotel, and Dining” for ones like “X-Men Collateral Damage: Residential”. He also finds room in the budget to award himself a hefty bonus after his first tax season with the academy. And the tax season after that.

He doesn’t call Xavier “Professor” anymore unless it’s sarcastic. When you have a quarterly screaming match with the headmaster over budgetary restraints, spending priorities, and the definition of reasonable working expenses, honorifics become unnecessary. Besides, “Go suck a dick, Xavier!” just flows so much better.

Travis changes the layout of his room so that he can see out of the giant bay window when he’s working. His productivity suffers drastically when Wolverine trains shirtless in the courtyard with the other X-Men. He remembers from Pietro’s tour how many classrooms are lined with windows pointing at the same courtyard and knows he’s not the only one watching, knows that Logan has probably unknowingly sparked many sexual awakenings.

To his supreme delight, Logan keeps talking to him, and doesn’t stop talking to him. He continues to let Travis sit with him at what’s come to be known as their table. He leaves the mansion for reasons Travis won’t ask and returns with trinkets that he places on the table without fanfare: bootleg DVDs of musicals he’s not rich enough to see in person, a crumped box of half-eaten macaroons, a hand-woven yak-hair bracelet that reads “Tarvis”. He has a biting, sarcastic sense of humor and waits to unleash it when Travis is mid-drink. He is a good kisser.

A full year and a half later, Travis is thriving. He’s learned how to close a lid over his emotions so they don’t enrage local wildlife. With training, he’s also learning how to project more positive emotions. He’s still not ready to take his chances at a zoo, but the animals he fosters as part of an ongoing assignment tolerate him well enough. He’s mostly come to terms with the fact that he’s never going to win over the herd of indignant deer that roam the adjoining forest, though. The kids call him Snow White. A joke, at first, but it’s becoming his official mutant moniker. When Logan finds out, he guffaws that laugh Travis loves so much. He keeps the name.

Once or twice, he’s even managed to stop scuffles in the halls between hormonal teenagers before they begin by panically throwing waves of calm vibes at them. He carefully does not think too much about how his powers can affect more than just animals now.

He’s had more than a handful of students come out to him. He overcomes the shock of realizing he’s considered a bona fide responsible adult and queer role model and does his best to talk the kids through their burgeoning sexualities. Logan thinks it’s hilarious until one day a 13 year old girl with purple streaks in her hair (and necromantic powers) tries to ask him questions about liking guys _and_ girls.

Xavier is annoyingly supportive of Travis and Logan’s relationship. He waggles his eyebrows at them when the X-Men return from a mission and Travis is there to greet Wolverine. He sends them winks across the dining room when they’re sitting in their corner together for dinner. Logan explains that it’s because this is his first healthy relationship and Travis’s heart nearly explodes with affection at hearing Logan finally define and acknowledge the thing they’ve got going on.

It’s a particularly late night of wrangling numbers that sees Travis delivering his completed work to the headmaster’s office. He pushes his way through the cracked door to leave the folder on Xavier’s desk as usual and walks in on Magneto straddling Xavier’s wheelchair. He pivots a 180 and wordlessly walks right back out, pretending he didn’t just witness an unhelmed, weeping Magneto tenderly, almost desperately, devour Xavier’s moaning mouth. Travis doesn’t tell Logan why Xavier’s stopped performing eyebrow gymnastics at them and Logan wisely does not pry.

Two years after his arrival, Travis can barely remember what his life was like before the mansion, Xavier, and Logan. He knows he’s there for good when he becomes an unofficial talking point on Pietro’s power-walking tour of the mansion.


End file.
